Chamber Music, page 75

Subcollection: PianoOlga Neuwirth’s music is full of shifts, ruptures, deformations and associative relationships. Her works build upon a various materials of sound, image and language taken from highly diverse backgrounds, which she interconnects without evening out their intrinsic characteristics. Usually marked by unpredictable transformations during which the music branches out like lush organic growth, the composition comes to reflect the heterogeneous starting materials.
These also include a special way of handling the musical instruments - the composer manipulates the tone colors, usually through untypical tuning and preparation, thus providing the groundwork for the creation of highly differentiated musical situations. This roughening of sounds cannot be taken as a mere rejection of conventional euphony. Rather, it articulates a need to capture the potential that lies dormant in these sound producers and harness it for the process of composition thus creating a means of expression based on these unusual ways of sound production in order to formulate contemporary musical figures. Although the composer always traces her vocabulary back to the process of generation that begins with the acoustics and resonance of the instruments used, the process can be understood most clearly in her chamber music instrumentation, especially in the works composed for strings. (Stefan Drees)

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: Chamber EnsembleGeorges Aperghis was not the first well-known composer for musical theatre who neglected the less "spectacular" varieties of music. But unlike the "symphonic form," which Aperghis has rarely considered since his initial attempt in 1972, chamber music recurs throughout his oeuvre. As though staging a theatrical work, Aperghis plays his game in a chamber music hall with new instrumental combinations, creating a connection between the instruments and European musical tradition.

XASAX Ensemble de saxophones modulable: In 1992 the three French saxophonists Serge Bertocchi, Pierre-Stéphane Meugé, and Jean-Michel Goury joined with Marcus Weiss of Switzerland to form XASAX - Ensemble de saxophones modulable. Their experience with contemporary music as soloists and chamber musicians in ensembles like Klangforum Wien and ensemble recherche flowed into their development of a new repertoire for saxophone. XASAX pursues a variety of historical connections, establishes ties to seemingly alien trends, and thereby creates new terrain for this young instrument.

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: Chamber Ensemble"'Beckett'...is a work for 23 players divided into five homophonic groups, each staying at or near its original pitch or pitches...The new disc has superlative sound: there is an inconspicuous crispness to Cambreling's Viennese band, but also a cushion-like warmth to the lower winds and strings, and a beautiful blend of timbres. This would be an excellent introduction to Feldman...Feldman acolytes will also need the disc. Indeed, no one should be caught without it." -Ashby, ARG

Collection: Vocal CollectionAfter his hospitalization for a psychological break in the 1950's, Giacinto Scelsi began composing music that was radically different from his earlier, more conventional serial works. Based on explorations of tiny details of timbral variation, his new music defied categorization. His first new works are compelling examinations of repeated notes and their microtonal neighbors. His later pieces are lush sculptures of sound, placed carefully in a silent landscape. 'Okanagon,' is a microscopic observation of repeated low notes, juxtaposed at various angles. In some "views" the ensemble plays percussively on the sides of their instruments, giving the impression of a note magnified so largely that one can hear the individual pulses.
Though it may be difficult to relate Scelsi to other music, it is not without contemporary relevance. Ligeti's string quartets and Penderecki's "Threnody for the Victims of Hiroshima" also employ drone and microtonality. Theirs are harsh cries to Scelsi's fascinated murmur, however.
This great collection, all from various stages of Scelsi's second period, shows the development of his style. Unconventional music always risks horrifying misinterpretation but Hans Zender and the Vienna Klangforum honor Scelsi's music with a reverence for timbre and space. The performances are excellent, and beautifully recorded.

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: String instrumentsWolfgang Rihm's 'Music for Three Strings' is an immediately striking piece, opening with violent, barely controlled chordal attacks, which become long drones. The first three movements proceed thus, punctuated by long sections of silence. Rihm freely refers to tonal harmony without confining himself to it. The music is reminiscent of the New Viennese School before it became dogmatic in its strict adherence to atonality. The influence of early Berg is audible in the middle section (three "Canzonas") as well as recurring quotations from the late Beethoven quartets.
Much of the material requires strident playing, but also very sensitive ensemble work. For example, many of the triple forte attacks are accompanied by droning pianissimo in the other voices, which must remain audible. The Trio Recherche does a remarkable job of enacting the mania of the first section without stepping on each other's toes. Throughout the work they bring out the expressionistic fervor in Rihm's music with intelligent and supportive playing.

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: Chamber Ensemble... As only few other composers, Gérard Grisey was a master at working in these various "altidudes", one who skilfully zoomed back and forth between micro- and macro-time, or, in Grisey's beautiful imagery, between human time and the extended time of whales and the extremely compressed time of insects. and this disposal of time, of the hearing perspevtive - Grisey certainly knew it - affords the music a power that touches on the metaphysical just as the texts of "Quatre chants" do. "Fertilised with time, the music is afforded the power of the sacred of which Georges Bataille speaks; mute and silent forces that invoke and exorcise the sound and its emergence - perhaps and only for a moment. (Peter Niklas Wilson)

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: Quartet"When composing I imagine holding the sounds and noises in my hands, feeling their potential between my palms, weighing them. Skeletal textures and musical gestures develop out of this. Then, like pictures placed in a large white room, I set them in silence, next to, above, beneath and against each other. (Rebecca Saunders)

Collection: Chamber MusicSubcollection: Chamber EnsembleLachenmann chose a text by Leonardo da Vinci:"...but when I had remained silent for a fairly long time, all at once two feelings awoke in me. Fear and desire. Fear of the cave's looming darkness, but the desire to see with my own eyes what marvels may lie within..." and there are many marvels to discover on this exceptional recording.